Summary

Scene Seven

Scene Seven begins in the late afternoon in mid-September. It is Blanche’s birthday, and Stella is completing decorations and preparing a birthday dinner when Stanley enters. Blanche is bathing, and Stanley tells Stella that he’s “got th’ dope on your big sister” as Stella pleads with him to stop picking on Blanche (Scene Seven, p. 129). Stanley bulldozes past Stella’s objections and reveals his reliable sources have checked her out and that Blanche is famous in Laurel at the Flamingo Hotel, where she had so many lovers she was asked to leave.

Stella reacts with disbelief, claiming there is no truth in the rumors Stanley has heard, but Stanley goes on to say that not only had Blanche been promiscuous, but that the real reason she was run out of Laurel was because she had begun having an affair with a seventeen-year-old boy...